Advertising on Nexus Mods. The how, what and why, and what to do when it goes wrong.

[JohnShaft]

In response to post #45639020.

crimsomrider wrote: Very fun and informative read ^^

I personally love The Nexus because it has done so much for me and plenty of other people out there, therefore I never ran Adblock on this site, but recently the stupid ads that hijacked my browser were getting out of hand, so instead of doing what most people would do, I bought the Supporter service just to stop with the ads and support the site a bit. And then a few days later someone donated me the Premium Service, so I'd say I've pretty much done everything I can for the site :D

Thank you Dark0ne for everything you created and the team behind you. This is a beautiful place to share creativity and I thank you for it.

Cheers!

+1 for this!

[MrJohn]

In response to post #45637070. #45640620 is also a reply to the same post.

soupdragon1234 wrote:

What gives you the right to show us ads? Because you own the site? It is an open internet and you've made this site as a free resource. Some people pay for their bandwidth (such as mobile internet), and would probably not want to pay for the advertisements themselves given the choice. Is it right to push advertisements on them? And if we have the magic switch that says "no thanks", is it right for others to slander them because they don't give out money instead? Should we be expected to hand out cash for sites in exchange for ad-free nature? Ads that they push themselves.

 

Yes, because he owns the site. Secondly, it has to be paid for. What you think stuff like this comes for free? Really? The mobile argument might have some value if they paid for this site as well as their internet service but they didn't, and since when did you last contribute anything towards this site, its maintenance or its content?

 

Because from where I'm sitting you're a freeloader and I'll tell you this, when the balance of costs vs. advertising reaches a tipping point that more people use adblock than not, when those expenses can no longer be covered, it'll mean either the end of free sites like this or they'll become a paid up subscription model membership only. Its only the ads that pay for peoples free membership and the hosting costs of free mods and the law of ever diminishing returns applies here. :ermm:

memlapse wrote: edited: I should have read the whole post. I took it out of context.

I see your point. I know the site has to be paid for, but again. Sure he owns it, but he has opened it freely to the community. Running ads is a way to monitize, and I don't have a problem with it per se. I have not contributed to the site in any sort of way (other than trying to be a helpful mod user), but then again I am not hired by the site for any sort of job.

And we are not taking advantage of Nexus by "Being freeloaders". I never imposed on Dark himself asking for it. Thereby calling us freeloaders for going to a page open for all without giving back is sort of what I have a problem with.

Your concern about paid membership and restrictions are valid, and you could use your argument as "we helping, you freeloading", but expecting people who aren't directly involved to contribute is, well. Ludacris sorta. You could drive people around who need it for free, and someone might give you a few bucks. But then turning on those not giving you cash would be quite unreasonable.

And is the site really free if you have a hidden payment every time you visit? What of those on restricted, mobile or otherwise paid broadband who directly pays for the bandwidth used, including the ads they wouldn't take if they chose? Ads are already the end of a "free site".

Consider the ads donations, and premiums are paid products. Not everyone donates, and trying to pressure someone to donate because "it's the right thing to do" or to "help out" is really not the way to go.

[Narkah]

My primary issue with advertisements is how much they bog down the page loading. Without an Ad Blocker here, I could be suffering up to 30 seconds of load times on just the ads alone - with my Ad Blocker, I load in about 2, like any normal web page. If the ads weren't like this, I would gladly disable it for Nexus, as you guys deserve the revenue, but when loading times increase by so much, it simply isn't worth the hassle of using the site in the first place without an Ad Blocker. I would buy a lifetime membership if I had the money, but I just don't unfortunately.

 

After doing a bit more research, I feel the need to add an edit here.

 

Supporter seems like an excellent idea, and I didn't know about it until today. I will be very heavily considering it.

Edited December 14, 2016 by Narkah

[Athralsatar]

I am curious as to what the nexusmods owners think of a service like the brave browser.

 

 

Also, I didn't want to see ads on this site but I understand how important paying for the servers to host content, especially with the new edition of skyrim, so I paid for premium and will continue doing so. It's really not a hard concept, and your ads didn't seem horrible before anyway.

[MrJohn]

A small question, what happens when people use VPNs or TOR? Do you still get "Impressions"? And what would their value be? Because to me it would seem that if you used VPN to connect to a server, download the ad-supported site from Nexus, then snip the ad out on the VPN server and redirect it to you, from Nexus site someone still visited and saw the ad, even though the end-user didn't.

[Elianora]

In response to post #45634790. #45635625, #45643415 are all replies on the same post.

MrJohn wrote: Interesting article, much better content than the others I would commend.

The problem I have with the advertisements are mostly their annoyance. As far as I knew, you had removed the "lifetime membership" option back when you announced the "final sale" of them. But my opinion is not gained a positive spur from this article.

Viewing picture 5 and 6, I would like to say a few things. Beginning with picture 5, the banner advertisements aren't too bad. The bright background mitigates my first issue, which is contrast. The second square ad really breaks this. The first thing that pops up on the site is a bright white box, clearly disrupting the otherwise gray and pleasant to look at information, trying to squeeze my eyes to look at it, interrupting my viewer experience to push their product. It doesn't fit, and thereby becomes an anomaly in an otherwise good site.

We scroll down, and see what you see in picture 6. Not too bad. Banner ad holds the color of the page, it can be ignored successfully. But there it is again. Bright colors, clearly attempting to gut at you. "Look at me!!!!" it screams.

Which is the purpose of an advertisement, to gain attention. But right now my attention wants to be on modding.

Which brings me to the 2nd point, targeted advertisement. I am not condoning the art of cookie tracking, am quite strongly against it and any form of advertisements, even though their "wooo eviiiiil" is necessary. But there are a few simple steps that could help. Using your examples for picture 5 and 6, only one advertisement could be uniformly helpful to anyone viewing your site. The first banner ad, Discord. Something for the gamers. The rest are about christmas presents or traveling, nothing that you would come to the Nexus for. I doubt Github would have as much success putting up ads for puppies as you would for traveling. Understandably, you do not control the ads yourself as you've said, but it doesn't help.

A minor tweak would be to add more focus on gaming related advertisement, or to push your ad-provider for more things closer to home. Gaming equipment (keyboards, mice, Logitech/Razer etc.), computers (such as Origin PC), games or games media. These things would be interesting to your demographic (gamers/modders), and would maybe persuade more to help out. What I would rather fear is that it would cost your bottom line to restrict advertisement content. As far as I am concerned, most of these ads are just as bad as any other "bad ads", only "less frowned upon" so to speak.

I can only speak for myself of course. Generally, pages without ads are just better, cleaner and smoother. Less bandwidth is used, if you are on a metered connection, than if not. It all eventually boils down to ethics and morals.

What gives you the right to show us ads? Because you own the site? It is an open internet and you've made this site as a free resource. Some people pay for their bandwidth (such as mobile internet), and would probably not want to pay for the advertisements themselves given the choice. Is it right to push advertisements on them? And if we have the magic switch that says "no thanks", is it right for others to slander them because they don't give out money instead? Should we be expected to hand out cash for sites in exchange for ad-free nature? Ads that they push themselves.

In closing, I commend you for this article. The look into the backside of Nexus is always interesting, not always positive, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. You also avoided the "we needs monies, pls help" side of the story, though whenever a site mentions the "ads", they usually want to spark some feeling of "Maybe I should help", which is quite cheap. Personally I am torn on the issue regarding finances, as I know it is difficult.

Ethreon wrote: "What gives you the right to show us ads? Because you own the site?"

Exactly. He owns it, and he would have to pay for it from his pocket. Even if he'd be a rich man, doubt you'd get the same amazing offer if there were no ads. Rest of your argument might be based and intelligent, but that there is a dumb statement.

MrJohn wrote: A fair point. But there are other variables than just ownership. Consider it an open house. To enter you need to bring posters. But the house is open for all. No entry fee. So you arrive without grabbing that poster. Does he have the right to smack you for not taking the poster? The house is open, after all. He could plead you to bring the poster. A form of begging, if you are cynical.

But the fact is this that the road you use to travel to said house, the car/transport you use and so forth you cover yourself. Only the end-point is "owned", so to speak. But ads are like a baggage that rides along with you. Like a poster you need to bring with you.

This boils down to opinions, but really I don't think ownership of a site would also give you right to force ads people do not want to see. What would be a great idea would be choice of ads, where you could see the ad options and tailor the ads based on color, contrast, type and so forth, to actually give a personalized ad service that could be unintrusive and maybe even helpful.

I don't blame the users of ads, but rather the ads themselves. It's like producers like EA f*#@ing companies over, the same as advertisers f*#@ the companies using them over. It's all greed.

> What gives you the right to show us ads?

^ The fact that he spends hundreds of thousands of monies a year to provide the service free for ungrateful people like you and hired a team of professional people to keep the site running as great as it can. Edited December 14, 2016 by Elianora

[Elta1]

In response to post #45634790. #45635625, #45643415, #45644335 are all replies on the same post.

MrJohn wrote: Interesting article, much better content than the others I would commend.

The problem I have with the advertisements are mostly their annoyance. As far as I knew, you had removed the "lifetime membership" option back when you announced the "final sale" of them. But my opinion is not gained a positive spur from this article.

Viewing picture 5 and 6, I would like to say a few things. Beginning with picture 5, the banner advertisements aren't too bad. The bright background mitigates my first issue, which is contrast. The second square ad really breaks this. The first thing that pops up on the site is a bright white box, clearly disrupting the otherwise gray and pleasant to look at information, trying to squeeze my eyes to look at it, interrupting my viewer experience to push their product. It doesn't fit, and thereby becomes an anomaly in an otherwise good site.

We scroll down, and see what you see in picture 6. Not too bad. Banner ad holds the color of the page, it can be ignored successfully. But there it is again. Bright colors, clearly attempting to gut at you. "Look at me!!!!" it screams.

Which is the purpose of an advertisement, to gain attention. But right now my attention wants to be on modding.

Which brings me to the 2nd point, targeted advertisement. I am not condoning the art of cookie tracking, am quite strongly against it and any form of advertisements, even though their "wooo eviiiiil" is necessary. But there are a few simple steps that could help. Using your examples for picture 5 and 6, only one advertisement could be uniformly helpful to anyone viewing your site. The first banner ad, Discord. Something for the gamers. The rest are about christmas presents or traveling, nothing that you would come to the Nexus for. I doubt Github would have as much success putting up ads for puppies as you would for traveling. Understandably, you do not control the ads yourself as you've said, but it doesn't help.

A minor tweak would be to add more focus on gaming related advertisement, or to push your ad-provider for more things closer to home. Gaming equipment (keyboards, mice, Logitech/Razer etc.), computers (such as Origin PC), games or games media. These things would be interesting to your demographic (gamers/modders), and would maybe persuade more to help out. What I would rather fear is that it would cost your bottom line to restrict advertisement content. As far as I am concerned, most of these ads are just as bad as any other "bad ads", only "less frowned upon" so to speak.

I can only speak for myself of course. Generally, pages without ads are just better, cleaner and smoother. Less bandwidth is used, if you are on a metered connection, than if not. It all eventually boils down to ethics and morals.

What gives you the right to show us ads? Because you own the site? It is an open internet and you've made this site as a free resource. Some people pay for their bandwidth (such as mobile internet), and would probably not want to pay for the advertisements themselves given the choice. Is it right to push advertisements on them? And if we have the magic switch that says "no thanks", is it right for others to slander them because they don't give out money instead? Should we be expected to hand out cash for sites in exchange for ad-free nature? Ads that they push themselves.

In closing, I commend you for this article. The look into the backside of Nexus is always interesting, not always positive, but that doesn't mean I don't enjoy them. You also avoided the "we needs monies, pls help" side of the story, though whenever a site mentions the "ads", they usually want to spark some feeling of "Maybe I should help", which is quite cheap. Personally I am torn on the issue regarding finances, as I know it is difficult.

Ethreon wrote: "What gives you the right to show us ads? Because you own the site?"

Exactly. He owns it, and he would have to pay for it from his pocket. Even if he'd be a rich man, doubt you'd get the same amazing offer if there were no ads. Rest of your argument might be based and intelligent, but that there is a dumb statement.

MrJohn wrote: A fair point. But there are other variables than just ownership. Consider it an open house. To enter you need to bring posters. But the house is open for all. No entry fee. So you arrive without grabbing that poster. Does he have the right to smack you for not taking the poster? The house is open, after all. He could plead you to bring the poster. A form of begging, if you are cynical.

But the fact is this that the road you use to travel to said house, the car/transport you use and so forth you cover yourself. Only the end-point is "owned", so to speak. But ads are like a baggage that rides along with you. Like a poster you need to bring with you.

This boils down to opinions, but really I don't think ownership of a site would also give you right to force ads people do not want to see. What would be a great idea would be choice of ads, where you could see the ad options and tailor the ads based on color, contrast, type and so forth, to actually give a personalized ad service that could be unintrusive and maybe even helpful.

I don't blame the users of ads, but rather the ads themselves. It's like producers like EA f*#@ing companies over, the same as advertisers f*#@ the companies using them over. It's all greed.

Elianora wrote: > What gives you the right to show us ads?

^ The fact that he spends hundreds of thousands of monies a year to provide the service free for ungrateful people like you and hired a team of professional people to keep the site running as great as it can.

@MrJohn Its more like having someone else drive you around and they are willing to do it for free if you occasionally look at their crappy paintings. That person still has to maintain the car and put gas in it and you don't.

[evlydia]

Nexus mods was the first ever modding site I used so it naturally has a special place in my heart. This past year has solidified that even more so.

 

It started when I was modding the Sims 2 which doesn't really have a modding community on Nexus compared to other places. One site in particular really struck a nerve with me. I'm someone who use Adblock for a variety of reasons and if I wanted to download a mod on this particular site, I would have to wait an entire minute for the download to start if I had Adblock turned on. The downside is that if I turned Adblock off, the website would load visibly slower. I have a connection with 15Mbps down and while that's not very high for gamers and geeks, it's enough to stream a video in 1080p just fine. You would think that loading webpages would be speedy, right? The website, which contained many mods for the game I was looking for, would take an average of 2 -3 seconds to load every time I hit the next page button due to the incredibly large number of advertisements on the page. With Adblock turned on, the page would load instantly (at the time, the website seems much slower these days). In addition, they want $3.50 PER MONTH to disable ads.

 

Compare this to Nexus mods.The places where ads would normally be are simply replaced with a message informing you how you can make a one time purchase to disable ads. It's nonintrustive. It doesn't punish you for using Adblock. Plus, to disable ads, it's pretty cheap. In addition, how upfront Nexus has been about the troubles they've had with bad ads and the steps they've taken, the respect I've had has grown.

 

So starting today, I'm not disabling my Adblock. Instead, I've now paid the $2 it takes to permanently disable ads...and this is coming from someone who won't even try an app on their phone if it says "contains ads" even if there's a buyout option to disable them. The reason I've decided to pay is for the excellent quality of service Nexus has given me over the years. So a big shout out to you Nexus Mods for being generally awesome.

[tonicmole]

Who the hell is complaining about advertisements? I'm sick of everyone demanding everything for free like spoiled brats. I'd accept, "I'm trying to make money off of my mod site." If I owned and ran a massive site that cost as much as the Nexus and a user complained about small adds I'd permaban them into Oblivion! Than I'd start a mandatory $15 a month membership like every other online service. Which honestly, a $5 a month fee for downloading isn't a bad idea. Unless ads really work, but otherwise.

[pancakemix]

I have nothing against ads or sites that use them. Most websites, like say, YouTube are just fine for me with ads, but sometimes ads get to be so resource demanding that my computer (or at least internet browser) becomes almost, if not, completely non-responsive. Unfortunately the Nexus is an example of a website that barely runs with ads for me, some others include PC Gamer's website and Wikia.

 

Now, I don't have or use Adblock, but I do have an Avast utility that allows me to block ad tracking. That doesn't sound like it would block the ad itself, but when in use no ads display, so I assume the effect is the same. That's why I believe ads are responsible, because when I use the utility to block ad tracking the Nexus and other trouble sites start running just fine.

 

I know what you're thinking, "then report the bad ads, ya' dingus!" But how am I supposed to know what ads are causing performance problems? Even when I refresh the page or move to a different one I usually get the same 4 ads, making it impossible to compare performances.

 

 

P.S. I totally agree when you say the advertising industry needs regulation/reform. I'm hardly an insider or expert, but I did take a college course in marketing (advertising) as part of a business degree and it said one of the biggest issues facing marketers (advertisers) and business in general is the carelessness of other businesses.

Edited December 15, 2016 by pancakemix